Production Code EEE

First Transmitted:
1-02/01/1971 17:15
2-09/01/1971 17:15
3-16/01/1971 17:15
4-23/01/1971 17:15

Cast
John Baskcomb : Rossini
Christopher Burgess : Professor Philips
Dave Carter : Museum Attendant
Nicholas Courtney : Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Roger Delgado : The Master
Richard Franklin : Captain Mike Yates
David Garth : Time Lord
Pat Gorman : Auton Leader
Stephen Jack : Farrel Senior
Haydn Jones : Auton Voice
Barbara Leake : Mrs. Farrel
John Levene : Sergeant Benton
Katy Manning : Jo Grant
Bill McGuirk : Policeman
Frank Mills : Radio Telescope Director
Jon Pertwee : The Doctor
Andrew Staines : Goodge
Norman Stanley : Telephone Mechanic
Roy Stewart : Strong Man
Harry Towb : McDermott
Dermot Tuohy : Brownrose
Terry Walsh : Auton Policeman
Michael Wisher : Rex Farrel

Crew
John Baker : Film Cameraman
Bruce Best : Assistant Floor Manager
Geoffrey Botterill : Film Editor
Robert Brothers : Provision of Circus Sequences
Terrance Dicks : Script Editor
Colin Dixon : Studio Sound
Ron Grainer : Title Music
and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, arranged by Delia Derbyshire
HAVOC stunt group : Action/Stunts
Michealjohn Harris : Visual Effects
Jan Harrison : Make-Up
Brian Hodgson : Special Sounds
Robert Holmes : Writer
Nicholas John : Production Assistant
Barry Letts : Producer
Barry Letts : Director
There was no director credit on screen in view of the fact that Barry Letts was the series' producer.
Eric Monk : Studio Lighting
Dudley Simpson : Incidental Music
Ken Trew : Costumes
Ian Watson : Designer

Plot Outline from Wikipedia

At a circus, a horsebox materialises out of thin air with the distinctive sound of a TARDIS. The occupant is a thin, bearded man dressed in black who introduces himself as the Master to the circus owner, Rossini, and hypnotises him. Subsequently, the Master and Rossini break into the National Space Museum and steal a translucent plastic polyhedron, one of the energy units used by the Nestene Consciousness in their attempted invasion of Earth. The Master then takes the energy unit to a radio telescope facility, killing the technician on duty with a weapon that shrinks the victim, leaving a twisted, doll-sized body. The Master then hooks up the energy unit to the radio telescope and sends a signal into space.

At UNIT headquarters, the Doctor meets his new assistant, a young, enthusiastic but slightly scatter-brained trainee named Josephine Grant. Dismayed at first that he is not getting a scientist to replace Liz Shaw, who has returned to Cambridge, he reluctantly accepts her when he hasn't the heart to tell her otherwise. Reports of the theft of the Nestene unit and sabotage at the radio telescope facility lead the Doctor, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Jo to investigate. At the facility, the Doctor encounters a fellow Time Lord who warns him that his old enemy, the Master, is here and will try to kill him. The Master, in the meantime, has hypnotised Farrel, the young manager of a plastics factory. Under the name of Colonel Masters, he takes over the factory's production to build Autons. McDermott, Farrel's assistant, gets suspicious of Masters and calls up Farrel's father, the owner of the factory.

Jo, investigating Farrel's factory, is discovered by the Master who wipes her memory of meeting him and sends her back to UNIT. When the chained-up box that used to contain the unit is brought to UNIT headquarters, Jo offers to open it. The Doctor realizes that Jo has been hypnotised and that the box contains a bomb.

The Doctor manages to throw the open and smoking box out the window, where it explodes in the river. Jo falls into a catatonic state from which the Doctor revives her, but she is unable to remember where she met the Master. At the factory, McDermott confronts the Master, and is killed by a plastic chair that swallows him up and suffocates him. The elder Farrel arrives, threatening to retake the factory, but his will is strong enough to resist the Master's hypnotism. The Master sends the elder Farrel home with a plastic doll of a troll, which comes to life when placed next to the radiator and strangles him.

Searching for Phillips, the other scientist missing from the facility, the Doctor visits Rossini's circus. He is captured by Rossini just as he is about to open the Master's TARDIS and tied up. He is freed by Jo, who had followed the Doctor there against orders. Phillips, also under the Master's influence, tries to kill Jo and the Doctor with a grenade. The Doctor urges Phillips to resist, and he is killed while trying to throw the explosive away. The Doctor enters the horsebox and removes something from it, only to be attacked by Rossini and his men. Seemingly rescued by a police car, the Doctor gets suspicious and unmasks them as Autons.

Escaping from the vehicle, the Doctor and Jo hide as the Brigadier and Captain Mike Yates arrive. A firefight breaks out between them and the Autons from which they manage to escape in the Brigadier's car. Back at UNIT, the Doctor fits the dematerialisation circuit he "borrowed" from the Master's TARDIS and tries to take off, but only manages to produce a lot of smoke. His frustration turns into amusement, however, when he realizes that without the circuit, the Master is now trapped on Earth as well.

Meanwhile, Autons appearing like men dressed with big plastic heads hand out plastic daffodils to the public. Soon deaths from asphyxiation, shock and heart failure are being reported across the country. The only connection is between the first two victims - McDermott and the elder Farrel. Interviewing Mrs Farrel, Jo and the Doctor discover the elder Farrel's concerns about "Colonel Masters". The Master, meanwhile, has infiltrated UNIT headquarters disguised as a telephone technician and installs a long, plastic telephone cable in the Doctor's laboratory. The Doctor brings the troll doll back to UNIT to examine it, but it is simply solid plastic. While the Brigadier and the Doctor are at the factory, the doll comes to life due to its proximity to a Bunsen burner and attacks Jo, until Yates shoots it. At the now empty factory, the Brigadier and Doctor discover that Farrel has chartered a bus. They also find a plastic daffodil and an Auton, proving the connection between the factory and the Master.

Back at UNIT, Yates tells Doctor about the doll, but using heat on the daffodil fails to activate any sinister function. The telephone rings, and it is the Master, who bids the Doctor goodbye. The Master sends an electronic signal across, animating the telephone cable which then tries to strangle the Doctor.

Luckily the Brigadier hears the Doctor's cries for help and disconnects the cable. The Brigadier calls out an airstrike on the Auton bus. As the Doctor tries to decode the Nestene instructions imprinted in the plastic flower, a radio signal from a walkie-talkie accidentally activates it. The daffodil sprays a plastic film over Jo's face, nearly suffocating her until the Doctor removes the film with a spray. The plastic quickly dissolves soon after, explaining why it was not found at the sites of the deaths.

The Master arrives at UNIT to retrieve his dematerialisation circuit, threatening to kill Jo if he does not hand it over. Jo, trying to convince the Doctor not to, foolishly blurts out that the airstrike has been confirmed. With this revelation, the Master decides to bring Jo and the Doctor to the Auton bus parked in a quarry. The Brigadier has no choice but to abort the airstrike, and the bus drives off to the radio telescope. Farrel, regaining his wits at last, tries to crash the bus in a field, and the Doctor and Jo escape. UNIT troops engage the Autons while the Doctor and Jo pursue the Master into the facility's control room where the Master is opening the radio frequency for the Nestene invasion force to come through. However, the Doctor convinces the Master that the Nestenes will not distinguish between ally or foe once they arrive. Together, they close the channel for the invasion, driving the Nestenes back to wherever they were coming from and causing the Autons to collapse. While the Doctor and the Brigadier catch their breath, the Master vanishes.

At the bus, the Master emerges, apparently surrendering, but when he pulls out a pistol, Yates shoots him. The Doctor peels back the disguise on the corpse to reveal that it is Farrel made up look like the Master, as the real Master drives off in the bus. However, with the dematerialisation circuit in the Doctor's hands, the Master is still trapped on Earth. The Doctor remarks to Jo that he looks forward to their next encounter.

Analysis by Cuisle

This was a landmark story for several reasons. It saw the introduction of three important characters, Jo Grant, one of the most memorable of The Doctor’s companions, The Master, arguably his most enduring foe, and Mike Yates, an incidental character, but one who was significant in many of the stories, right up to Jon Pertwee’s last, Planet of the Spiders.

Jo’s arrival was the most unprepossessing. She walks into The Doctor’s lab and proceeds to cause havoc, damaging an experiment and getting called some uncomplimentary things by The Doctor. In her last episode that would be mirrored when she accidentally damaged an experiment by Clifford Jones, the man she was due to marry. Thus her character as slightly dippy, incurably clumsy, but with her own spark of genius and a sweet smile and chirpy enthusiasm was set. Whether it was the spark of genius or the smile that first endeared her to The Doctor is a moot point. His initial reluctance to have her as his assistant soon turned to a close companionship and, when the time came, and emotional parting.

The Master, played by Roger Delgado, is probably the reason I have never really liked men with beards. I am sure a psychologist could trace that irrationality back to his bearded villain. He arrives with his TARDIS disguised as a horse box and infiltrates a circus. Why, is never quite clear. The circus is actually rather surplus to the story. The plastics factory he also takes over by means of assassination and hypnotism is far more important. There is a strong suspicion the circus scenes were meant to take attention away from the fact that this was another Auton story centred on a plastics factory. A bit too much of a rerun of Spearhead from Space.

The other criticism levelled at this story was that they went overboard with the use of the old-fashioned Chroma-key or CSO effects. We all know the sort of thing. Look at any old film with effects in them, or the old weather reports of the 1971s, and you could see the tell-tale outline around the actors as if they had been cut out and stuck onto the scene. Modern CGI makes it look clumsy. But in 1971 it was cutting edge. Whether they used the effect TOO MUCH is a moot point. They used it primarily to create scenes such as the miniaturised dead man in the tool box, the killer troll doll, the arrival of the pin-striped Time Lord who travelled without a TARDIS and other non-naturalistic scenes. They also used it for a brave attempt at showing moving landscape outside a car while it was driving along, something that had dogged film makers since the silent movie days. No, I don’t think it was overdone. It is just unfortunate that the old fashioned effects date the story so very much in TV effects history.

On the other hand, they also serve to make this a very lovely example OF that history. Early colour TV, early effects used imaginatively, it has to be said. We’re spoiled by modern CGI. We can’t see the joins any more without programmes like ‘Confidential’ and all those extras on the DVDs to show how it was done. In the 1971s we suspended disbelief much more readily and didn’t mind about the demarcation line between real and unreal.

One effect that was quite impressive for it's time was the killer plastic film fired at people’s noses and mouths by the radio controlled daffodils. Jo looked genuinely distressed with the film over her face, and in fact it only needed that one demonstration to put across to the viewer the horror of what it meant. Having seen the Autons with the giant heads handing out the flowers to people in the streets it was easy to believe that thousands of people were at risk if The Doctor didn’t prevent the radio signal transmitting.

Yes, by the way, we’ve been THERE more recently. The Doctor had the same mission in “Rose”, the first episode of the resurrected series that saw Christopher Eccleston’s debut. Autons seem to have a very limited idea about how they plan to take over the Earth. The 2006 story gave a more adequate explanation of WHY they wanted to invade Earth than earlier stories ever had.

But I have to agree with those critics who complained that the dénouement was weak. Having helped the Autons all along, why WOULD The Master take The Doctor’s word for it that they would double cross him and work with him to destroy them? The Master in most future stories tended to be in charge, and the guest aliens working for him. The Master working FOR the alien entity in itself seems wrong and his turn around to working with The Doctor and against them seems wrong.

This is, of course one of those episodes the Mary White House crowd have always held up for criticism for using everyday objects in a terrifying way. That kind of criticism was first levelled at Doctor Who for the scene with Susan and the scissors in Edge of Destruction, and the producers have always taken care since to avoid putting dangerous ideas into the minds of their young viewers. But the real ‘terror’ of the Autons is that control over ordinary, everyday things. Phone wires, plastic flowers, furniture, etc. Interestingly, although it is implied that the Nestene can control ANY plastic, we really only see the plastics that have been specially created cause trouble. Ordinary, innocent plastic wasn’t forced into criminal acts.